What does it mean?

Doc

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I rarely use Internet Explorer but each time I do first the screen freezes then comes a long delay with the little egg-timer flashing then, finally, appears the message "High CPU usage by Internet Explorer." What's going on? And what can I do to correct this high usage in a program I rarely use? Doc
 

Maryn

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I'm not the expert many AW people are, but this suggests to me that Internet Explorer may be the target of some malware written especially for it, and that it's attempting to open other pages or programs in addition to what you want it do to. As the most-used browser, a fair number of viruses and that sort of ugliness are crafted specifically to work with it alone. If you don't get this when you use your usual browser, it makes sense.

When it happens, try hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete all at once, then select the tab Processes. This tells you the names of all the programs running and how much of your CPU's memory each one is claiming. You can click on MemUsage to sort them in order of usage and see what, besides Internet Explorer, is eating up your computer's resources.

Copy down the names of any processes you don't recognize which have high usage demands, and I bet someone here can tell you if they're legitimate or not.

Meanwhile, it's wise to be sure your antivirus and other protective software are up to date, and to run a full scan.

Maryn, whose browser is using 210K, word processing 33K, and something no doubt Microsoft using 43K (MsMpEng.exe, whatever that is)
 

Matera the Mad

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Not the worst guess ever. I would say, scan with everything possible (I believe you may be using Norton, which is NOT foolproof). Also try disabling IE add-ons, see if it makes any difference. You might not even know how much junk it's toting.

There aren't any easy answers out there in Google-land lol